Smoking is the most important cardiovascular (CV) risk factor. Stopping smoking halves the CV risk. Every clinician should provide a brief intervention with smokers. Intensive treatment should be available to those who need it. There are 37 Centers for Tobacco Dependence in the Czech Republic, which offer treatment including a psychobehavioral intervention and pharmacotherapy (varenicline, nicotine, bupropion). Czech physicians, pharmacists and nurses are regularly educated about smoking cessation. We describe the results of intensive treatment offered by our centers. Treatment includes screening (1 h), an intervention (2 h), and follow-up visits during the next 12 months. Among 3532 patients, 34.3 % had CO-validated abstinence at 12-months (including 489 patients who attended the screening visit + only the 12-month follow up visit). Among patients who underwent the intervention, the abstinence rate was 38.2 %. The majority of patients who underwent the intervention (N=2470) used some form of pharmacotherapy. After one year, the abstinence rate was 43.4 %, compared to 15.9 % (N=573) without pharmacotherapy. Only 28 % of patients came on the recommendation of a physician. Despite the decrease in CV risk following smoking cessation and the effectiveness of treatment, centers are underutilized., E. Králíková, A. Kmeťová, L. Štěpánková, K. Zvolská, V. Felbrová, S. Kulovaná, Z. Bortlíček, M. Blaha, K. Fraser., and Obsahuje bibliografii
We derive the phenomena of Landau damping as a stationary point of entropy functions with Lagrangian methods. The steady states are described inside of some interval of numbers with infinite fuzzy logic controllers. The results are also true for local equilibriums, i.e. for some global non-equilibriums functions.
Hypertrophied hearts are known for increased risk of arrhythmias and are linked with reduced ischemic tolerance. However, still little is known about state characterized only by increased left ventricle (LV) mass fraction. Seventeen isolated rabbit hearts with various LV mass were divided into two groups according to LV weight/heart weight ratio (LVW/HW ratio), namely group H and L (with higher and lower LVW/HW ratio, respectively) and underwent three short cycles of global ischemia and reperfusion. The differences in electrogram (heart rate, QRSmax, mean number, onset and dominant form of ventricular premature beats) and in biochemical markers of myocardial injury (creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase - LDH) and lipid peroxidation (4-hydroxy-2-nonenal - 4-HNE) were studied. As compared to group L, hearts in group H exhibited lower tolerance to ischemia expressed as higher incidence and severity of arrhythmias in the first ischemic period as well as increase of LDH and 4-HNE after the first reperfusion. In the third cycle of ischemia-reperfusion, the preconditioning effect was observed in both electrophysiological parameters and LDH release in group H. Our results showed consistent trends when comparing changes in electrograms and biochemical markers. Moreover, 4-HNE seems to be good potential parameter of moderate membrane alteration following ischemia-reperfusion injury., M. Hlaváčová, V. Olejníčková, M. Ronzhina, T. Stračina, O. Janoušek, M. Nováková, P. Babula, J. Kolářová, I. Provazník, H. Paulová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Fuzzy algebra is a special type of algebraic structure in which classical addition and multiplication are replaced by maximum and minimum (denoted ⊕ and ⊗ , respectively). The eigenproblem is the search for a vector x (an eigenvector) and a constant λ (an eigenvalue) such that A⊗x=λ⊗x , where A is a given matrix. This paper investigates a generalization of the eigenproblem in fuzzy algebra. We solve the equation A⊗x=λ⊗B⊗x with given matrices A,B and unknown constant λ and vector x . Generalized eigenvectors have interesting and useful properties in the various computational tasks with inexact (interval) matrix and vector inputs. This paper studies the properties of generalized interval eigenvectors of interval matrices. Three types of generalized interval eigenvectors: strongly tolerable generalized eigenvectors, tolerable generalized eigenvectors and weakly tolerable generalized eigenvectors are proposed and polynomial procedures for testing the obtained equivalent conditions are presented.
Clinical and experimental studies have repeatedly indicated that overloaded hearts have a higher vulnerability to ischemia/reperfusion injury. The aim of the present study was to answer the question whether the degree of tolerance to oxygen deprivation in hearts of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) may be sex-dependent. For this purpose, adult SHR and their normotensive control Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats were used. The isolated hearts were perfused according to Langendorff at constant pressure (proportionally adjusted to the blood pressure in vivo). Recovery of contractile parameters (left ventricular systolic, diastolic and developed pressure as well as the peak rate of developed pressure) was measured during reperfusion after 20 min of global no-flow ischemia in 5 min intervals. Mean arterial blood pressure was measured by direct puncture of carotid artery under light ether anesthesia in a separate group of animals. The degree of hypertension was comparable in both sexes of SHR. The recovery of contractile functions in SHR males and females was significantly lower than in WKY rats during the whole investigated period. There was no sex difference in the recovery of WKY animals; on the other hand, the recovery was significantly better in SHR females than in SHR males. It may be concluded that the hearts of female SHR are more resistant to ischemia/reperfusion injury as compared with male SHR. This fact could have important clinical implications for the treatment of cardiovascular disease in women., J. Bešík, O. Szárszoi, J. Kuneš, I. Netuka, J. Malý, F. Kolář, J. Pirk, B. Ošťádal., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Top responsiveness was shown by Alcalde and Revilla \cite{AR} to guarantee the existence of core stable partitions in hedonic coalition formation games. In this paper we prove the existence of Nash stable partitions under top responsiveness when a mutuality condition is imposed.
We introduce topographic versions of two latent class models for collaborative filtering. Topographic organization of latent classes makes orientation in rating/preference patterns captured by the latent classes easier and more systematic. Furthermore, since we deal with probabilistic models of the data, we can readily use tools from probability and information theories to interpret and visualize information extracted by the model. We apply our models to a large collection of user ratings for films.
In this paper we study the topological and metric rigidity of hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb H}^{n+1}$, the $(n+1)$-dimensional hyperbolic space of sectional curvature $-1$. We find conditions to ensure a complete connected oriented hypersurface in ${\mathbb H}^{n+1}$ to be diffeomorphic to a Euclidean sphere. We also give sufficient conditions for a complete connected oriented closed hypersurface with constant norm of the second fundamental form to be totally umbilic.
Pointfree formulas for three kinds of separating points for closed sets by maps are given. These formulas allow controlling the amount of factors of the target product space so that it does not exceed the weight of the embeddable space. In literature, the question of how many factors of the target product are needed for the embedding has only been considered for specific spaces. Our approach is algebraic in character and can thus be viewed as a contribution to Kuratowski's topological calculus.